From the Head
This has been one of those truly magical weeks at St Olave’s; the kind where the entire school feels alive with joy, music and sparkle. Our children have risen to every occasion with such confidence and enthusiasm and I could not be prouder of them. From our outstanding EYFS and Lower School Nativities, performed with charm and clarity well beyond their years, to our whole-school pantomime adventures, it has been a week filled with moments that remind us why this season is so special in a prep school. A particular highlight was Thursday’s Christmas Lunch. The Hall looked beautiful, the children arrived in a sea of festive jumpers, and the atmosphere was one of warmth, excitement and community. My sincere thanks go to our kitchen team who worked tirelessly to prepare such a wonderful meal and to all staff who ensured the occasion felt calm, joyful and memorable for every child. Of course, no festive week would be complete without a very special visitor. Father Christmas and his elf himself took time out of his extremely busy schedule to visit St Olave’s, much to the delight of the children. Their faces lit up as he stepped through the door, and it was a privilege to share in that sense of wonder and excitement. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our parents for your unwavering support, kindness and flexibility during these very busy final days of term. Whether adjusting to altered routines, attending performances, lending an extra pair of hands or simply offering a cheerful word at drop-off, your partnership makes an extraordinary difference. We never take it for granted. As we move into the final days of term, a reminder that our Upper School Carol Service takes place next Tuesday evening. The service begins at 6.00pm, and I know the children are working hard in rehearsals to ensure it is a beautiful celebration of music, reflection and the Christmas story. We look forward to welcoming families for what is always a highlight of the year. Term ends on Wednesday 17 December with an early finish. Thank you in advance for making the necessary arrangements; this helps us ensure a smooth and settled end to what has been an exceptionally full and successful term. Thank you, as always, for your continued support. It is a privilege to lead this wonderful community and I look forward to celebrating the final moments of the term together next week. Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Monthly Safeguarding Update
December – Safe Visitors and Clubs
We are careful about checks on all adults in school, but you can help too. If your child attends holiday clubs or tuition, please check the providers are reputable and staff are vetted. A quick question about safeguarding policies is a good habit to build.
This week at St Olave's
Pantomime at Greenwich Theatre ''Oh yes we did!'' Years 1 to 6 really got into the festive spirit on Wednesday with our annual trip to Greenwich theatre to see their wonderful pantomime performance of Peter Pan. There was singing, laughs, bubbles and even a pirate turning into a baby! It was lovely to see all of the smiling faces in the audience as the children enjoyed every moment of the performance. Roll on next year for Jack and the Beanstalk...
Christmas Jumper Day Thank you to everyone who donated to Save the Children, if you still want to donate the link is: https://christmas.savethechildren.org.uk/fundraising/cjd250000226
Christmas Lunch Our wonderful catering staff treated us to an AMAZING Christmas Lunch yesterday and we had a surprise visit from Father Christmas too!
Christmas Nativities
Our Early Years and Lower School children have been amazing this week in their Christmas Nativities. After dress rehearsals to the whole school on Monday, they put on two shows for parents too! We were so impressed with their confidence, their speaking and their beautiful singing and it got us all feeling festive. Well done children!
Rights Day Today was our second Rights Day of the year with a focus on Sustainable Development Goal 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production. Our new Year 6 Rights Ambassadors introduced the day in assembly and the children took part in a number of activities with their classes. Goal 12 is about ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, which is key to sustain the livelihoods of current and future generations. Our planet is running out of resources, but populations are continuing to grow. If the global population reaches 9.8 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets will be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles. All children started by watching a short animation to peer into the lives of everyday products as they tell their story of mistreatment and neglect, which was an excellent introduction to the goal. Click here to watch the video yourself. The rest of the activities were designed to get the children thinking about their values when it comes to sustainability and responsibility and what little things we can all do to make a difference.
Battery Recycling Thank you to everyone who has been bringing batteries to school to be recycled. This week, some of our Eco MPs counted the batteries we have collected recently, and are happy to report that we have recycled 1,032 batteries! Please keep collecting batteries and sending them into school.
Notices
Young Voices 2026 Our Young Voices 2026 event is just weeks away! It always seems to come around so quickly once Christmas is behind us. I know this is an incredibly busy time of year, so I truly appreciate all your support in helping the children become more confident with the lyrics. Please continue to use the Music Room resources or access the playlists on Spotify, Apple Music, or whichever platform you prefer. Playing the songs in the car, at home, or anywhere you can - and encouraging the children to sing along - will really boost their confidence. Thank you, as always, for your wonderful support - and have a very merry Christmas! Ms Tyler
Nursery
What a wonderful festive week we have enjoyed in Little Acorns. The children were amazing in their very first Nativity performance and we were so proud of their confidence and enthusiasm as they performed to not one, not two, but three different audiences!! All the children sang, danced and spoke their words beautifully, well done Acorns!! On Thursday we had an another extremely exciting day as we all came to school in our Christmas jumpers ready for our delicious Christmas lunch. Chef and the kitchen elves excelled themselves with a wonderful feast which was topped off with a special visit from Father Christmas. Christmas crafts have continued in class and the children will be bringing home a beautiful decoration to hang on their tree…
Reception
The children have been utterly unbelievable this week, dazzling us with their acting, singing, and impressive stamina. We may have misplaced baby Jesus at the start of the Nursery performance (don’t worry, he turned up eventually!), but we certainly didn’t lose our sparkle or shine throughout all THREE performances. In maths, we’ve continued counting down to the Christmas holidays using our 5 frames. The children can explain, “one whole 5 frame and three more makes eight,”. Between crafting decorations, team-building activities, and creating imaginative codes with Greg Botrill to boost our vocabulary, the classroom has been a hive of joyful activity. On Thursday, we had a busy day where we wore our Christmas jumpers, watched a wonderful performance by the children in Year 6 and got to enjoy a delicious Christmas lunch! Lunch was a delight, made even more magical by a surprise visit from Santa himself! He brought a special classroom gift and told us how proud he was of our Nativity performance and we teachers couldn’t agree more. We’ve had the best time learning our songs (even if they are still stuck in our heads!), and we are beyond proud of every single child. Have a restful and magical weekend!
Year 1
What a week! Christmas is well and truly here. Thank you all for coming to see the children in their wonderful Nativity performance—we’re sure you’ll agree they were amazing! The children practised so well, and we are incredibly proud of what fantastic performers they are. After all their hard work, it was lovely to treat them to an exciting trip to the pantomime on Wednesday. They were impeccably behaved, and it was such a joy to share the festive excitement with them for the first time as part of a much-loved St Olave’s tradition. The festive cheer continued on Thursday as the children arrived at school in their Christmas jumpers, full of excitement for a delicious Christmas lunch prepared by our wonderful kitchen team. The Christmas cupcakes were certainly a highlight! To top off a magical week, the children received a special visit from the man in red himself. He has been so impressed by the kindness and enthusiasm they show every single day that he treated them to some exciting class gifts to enjoy together. We are sure the children will sleep well tonight after all the excitement this week has brought. We hope you have a lovely weekend, and we look forward to enjoying the last few days of term together next week! We are very proud of everything children have achieved this term and want to thank you for your ongoing support. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Year 2
Wow! What a week! The children all performed beautifully in their Nativity this week. They managed to make each performance better than the last. Thank you so much for supporting your children with learning their lines and providing them with brilliant costumes. We are so glad you were able to watch all of our hard work come together and celebrate all of the children at this special time of the year. As always, we managed to squeeze some learning around all of the Christmas festivities this week. In English, we continued to practice rhyming. We took another look at The Owl and The Pussycat by Edward Lear and had a go at changing the rhymes to make an adapted verse. This meant we could change the characters so we ended up with all sorts of creatures on an adventure together. We had toads travelling on roads, dogs sailing on logs and cats rowing in hats! In maths, we looked at identifying and drawing symmetry in 2D shapes. This was tricky to start with but with some cutting and folding and some mirrors to help us we are starting to get the hang of it! After the panto on Wednesday it was time to get crafty with some Christmassy creations. Eyes peeled for some of these arriving in envelopes soon in your children’s wallets! On Friday we had another Rights Day, this time focusing on reducing our waste. We discovered lots of common ways that waste is produced everyday by people and thought about ways we could reduce our own. We then made pledges to help us be more aware and give us somewhere to start in our journey towards being more sustainable. We then considered what we could do with some of the toys/clothes we no longer need at home and popular modern ways to give them a new lease of life. We created paper versions of adverts for these to be sold online. Hopefully we have inspired the children to have a declutter AND reduce their waste in time for Christmas!
Year 3
What a wonderfully busy week Year 3 have had. From multiplication and letter writing to train rides and theatre trips, Year 3 have conducted themselves as they have done all term - with impeccable manners, enthusiasm, fantastic attitudes to learning and lots and lots of fun! We have been working hard in maths this week as we continue to build our confidence with multiplication and division through problem solving challenges. The children are learning to apply their growing number knowledge in new situations and it has been wonderful to see their enthusiasm as they spot patterns, make connections and explain their thinking with increasing independence. In English, the children have been busy writing heartfelt thank you letters to Adisa the Verbalizer after a number of inspiring workshops this term. His infectious passion for performance poetry has encouraged us to find our voices and experiment with rhythm, imagery and expression. The children were eager to share how his words motivated them to become poets themselves and their letters show just how much the experience has meant to them. As we near the end of term and the corridors fill with Christmas hats, the sound of carols being practised for our concert next week and general Christmas cheer, the Year 3 team would like to thank our wonderful families for all their support this term and extend warmest wishes for the holiday season.
Year 4
What a busy week it’s been in Year 4 - the fun never stops! Our rehearsals for next week’s concert are in full swing, and the children are sounding absolutely fabulous. Please remember to practise our poem over the weekend to ensure we give a confident performance on Tuesday night. In Maths, we wrapped up our unit on multiplication and division. Please do keep practising times tables over the holidays — it makes such a big difference! In History, we learned all about the fearless Boudicca. The children wrote passionate speeches in the character of Boudicca, rallying her tribes to stand with her in her efforts against the Romans. Their enthusiasm and creativity truly brought this historical moment to life! Wednesday brought one of our favourite traditions: our annual trip to Greenwich Theatre to watch Peter Pan. There was plenty of laughter, lots of cheering, and a brilliant rendition of Steve’s Lava Chicken that kept everyone firmly in the panto spirit! Christmas Jumper Day filled the school with colour and joy. Thank you so much for your generous donations. We enjoyed a delicious Christmas lunch, and the excitement reached new heights when Father Christmas himself arrived with some wonderful new games for our class! We rounded off the week with our final Rights Day of 2025, focusing on 'Responsible Consumption and Production'. The children created thoughtful “Little Things That Make a Difference” posters, highlighting how one small, mindful change can have a long-lasting impact. They also put their debating skills to excellent use as they discussed whether buying new clothes or choosing second-hand is the better option. We are so proud of what the children have achieved this term and we wish you a restful and happy Christmas season and look forward to seeing you all in 2026!
Year 5
This week Year 5 had the pleasure of not one, but two pantomime performances! Oh no, we didn’t. Oh yes, we did! On Tuesday we were guests at Bexley Grammar to see their drama student production of Wendy & Peter Pan, and we were very impressed with the efforts of the performers starting out in their theatrical journey. The children represented St Olave’s brilliantly and proved themselves to be a great audience. We also saw Peter Pan in the whole school pantomime at Greenwich Theatre which, as ever, was a hoot! We were incredibly impressed by how well the children travelled to Greenwich and back on the train (which is a first for us at St O’s) and with how easy the journey was! In Faster Read, Birch class finished the epic adventure The Explorer by Katherine Rundell which we absolutely loved. Rundell is fast becoming our favourite author. Rowan class have been greatly enjoying The Midnight Tolbooth by Norton Juster in their sessions; often captivated by the clever play on words by the author to get his message across. In maths, we looked at the symmetry of 2D polygons. We identified lines of symmetry in isosceles and equilateral triangles, and quadrilaterals, and explored the link between the number of sides of a regular polygon and the number of lines of symmetry. Children were challenged to reflect shapes, including rectilinear polygons in horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines of symmetry. As always, Christmas Lunch on Thursday went down a treat; it is always a delight seeing everyone in their Christmas jumpers! We also had a visit from the ‘big man’ to start the proceedings and a delivery of some very exciting class games to help us into the New Year. Just a final reminder to encourage your child to practise our poems for the Christmas Carol concert next week so we can deliver a flawless performance! Have a super weekend everyone!
Year 6
What a fantastic week it has been in Year 6. The classroom has been full of curiosity, creativity, and plenty of hands-on learning. In maths, we have been getting to grips with converting between metric and imperial measurements. The children have been using multiplication and division to solve a range of real-life style problems, and there has been lots of great discussion as they explained their reasoning and compared different methods. Our art sessions this week took us into the world of ink and marbling. The children explored how colours move, swirl, and separate on water, experimenting with different ways to create patterns. They loved seeing how each design was completely unique, and many enjoyed discovering how even small changes in movement or colour choice could transform the final effect. We rounded off the week with an incredibly fun chocolate workshop. The children learned about Maya glyphs and why chocolate was so important to the Maya people. The highlight, of course, was getting to make their own chocolate creations. It was a brilliant way to end a busy week!
Outdoor Learning
This week the children have been busy collecting leaves, putting some more bark chippings on the paths and planting the last of our daffodil bulbs. We have received a large amount of pots and the children have put the bulbs into various ones to then put around the allotment to give a lovely colourful display come the Spring. The concrete shed has been cleared and the new path in the strawberry cage has been created. The weather has been so warm for December that a lot of the plants are getting very confused! I am sure the cold snap will come at some point!
Languages
What a week has been! With so much going on Christmas related, we kept it very festive in the Languages Department. In French, Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 have revised the Christmas vocabulary and played memory games to test their knowledge, whilst Year 3 made a Christmas card. In Latin, Year 6 carried on talking about travel and shopping in Roman Britain: some beautiful objects that our family bought during their trip to York are currently kept in York and Vindolanda’s museums, and the children still find it fascinating thinking that the people in our textbook existed and we have proof of their lives; in grammar, the children consolidated the use plurals and adjectival agreement. Have a great weekend!
Computing highlights Year 1 reviewed their understanding of programming algorithms with a quiz. Year 4 started transferring the data they researched from a paper based record to a digital spreadsheet. Pupils in Year 6 continued designing a digital 3D case for Micro:bit.
Design & Technology and Computing
Quiz of the week, ask your child if they can explain what the words in bold mean. Year 3 Pneumatic Monsters Pupils in Year 3 tested their pneumatic mechanisms for functionality and to identify any flaws to address. They also continued to add features to their monsters. Year 4 Slingshot Cars This week, Year 4 pupils started measuring and cutting the materials for their chassis. They used junior hacksaws and bench hooks to steadily cut their square dowel rod ready for assembly.